@Carl_Ingalls The only way that will work is if you have posts with that hashtag in it. You cannot search for people that way. You can tell them to search for @Carl_Ingalls and that would work or you can put the hashtag #Carl_Ingalls in your profile and go that route. Since you have shared posts with your hashtag they still would be able to find you but it's worth pointing out without those posts, just searching for your username with a hashtag instead of an @ sign will not find you.

Here is an example of how to post a tweet on Twitter that tells your followers there how to find you on Mastodon.

Hello my Twitter friends. If you ever move to Mastodon, please look me up there. The easiest way to do so is to do a search for #Carl_Ingalls on Mastodon.

I still have lots of wonderful friends on Twitter, and I want to make it easy for them to find me here.

The best way to do any kind of search on Mastodon is to use hashtags.

So, if it's me you're looking for, and you searched for #Ingalls or #Carl_Ingalls or #CarlIngalls, then here I am.

Here is an idea. If you want people to find you here on Mastodon, put your name in a #hashtag or two. Mine are:

#CarlIngalls (CamelCase version, which may be equivalent to all lower or all upper case)

#Carl_Ingalls (underscore version)

Apparently, the Mastodon #search feature does not search on plain words (words that are not preceded by a #) or phrases.

I just now did a test re dashes and underscores in #hashtags on Mastodon. Underscores work well, but dashes don't. For instance, #Carl_Ingalls works very well as a complete hashtag, but #Carl-Ingalls ends up being the same as #Carl (the dash and everything following is ignored).

Just in case someone tries to search for me by name on Mastodon, here are a few hashtags that might work:

#Ingalls #CarlIngalls
#Carl_Ingalls
#Carl-Ingalls